


It Just Won't Quit

by bluetoast



Category: Pendragon - D. J. MacHale
Genre: Gen, Pandemics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1322668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lifelight is a disease on Veelox - one with a cure.  Aja wishes more people would wise up and take it. Instead, she watches the illness kill millions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Just Won't Quit

Most people who have to watch their world end don't have to do it alone. There's always been someone – somebody else. Aja Killian, Traveler from Veelox, feels very much alone. It's been a few months since Lifelight went back on-line and several weeks since she's seen more than ten people, well ten different people, in the same day. She's seen the same ten people every day for what she estimates to be around three weeks. Things were bad. Worse than bad. Rubic City was, in fact, dying and almost no one cared. It had been in a state of limbo before the failed Reality Bug. The disastrous attempt to save the territory had inadvertently taken it off of life support and sent it into it's death throes. 

It's Spring and a city that should be teeming with life is instead, decaying under new grass and last year's fallen leaves. 

Aja can't remember a time before Lifelight – very few can – but she's heard of slaves on other Territories, but she has never left Veelox. She's always felt bound to this place. But if she could, if she could go anywhere in Halla, she would go to First Earth. She wanted to see what a busy city was supposed to be like. To hear the noise, the chaos, to see other people interacting with each other – to eat something other than gloid. Press had told her about the life on First Earth and it sounded wonderful to her. She wanted to see beyond the city – to see the mountains, see fields of grain – to see life being _lived._ Now all she could see was people doing those things on computer screens as they shunned reality and lived in their own private worlds. 

All these people suffering from the same disease. An epidemic of selfishness was written as the cause of death on this Territory. 

Aja Killian would very much like the people to wake up and realize what was wrong with the way they were living. It wasn't living – how could it be? A survey was taken among the phaders of the Lifelight Pyramids.   
Veelox's youngest citizen was _ten_ \- and currently living a life of his own choosing in a city that was a nine hour drive away from Rubic City.

Sometimes when Aja walks home, she sees all the empty, dark houses and businesses and thinks of what Press told her about Quillian. Where five families share an apartment designed for two people. She thinks how it would be to let all those people come and live here – to tell them nothing of Lifelight and let them start all over here and close the pyramids, leaving the jumpers to their own fate.

The people in the building were already dead – and the dead should bury the dead.

Aja's fairly certain a wise person on some Territory has said that before her.

She wonders if the Traveler form Quillian – what was her name again – Elli? Nevva? Press hadn't been to clear on that – would agree with her. Veelox was just sitting here – like an empty stage waiting for the actors to pour into the scene. Granted, it'd take a while to get the food production started up again – but they could make the gloid last until it did. 

That's what Aja thinks about every now and then – when she feels so hopeless. She thinks about sitting down to a meal on First Earth with that traveler and finding a way to plan it all out. But that could never be – only Travelers could use the flumes. It was acolytes using the flumes that had killed Kasha. Aja remembers meeting her father, Seegen and how he'd been worried at being seen on what he called a Gar world. She'd told him there was no-one to notice. 

Greed was a disease that was killing all the Territories, Veelox and Quillan faster than the others – although Eelong might not be to far behind, if what the klee has said was true. The people of Veelox were neglecting their home and the people of Quillian were being neglected. Both her and the Winter woman (whichever one of them it was) had to stand and watch what was happening – she hoped the Traveler of Quillan had better luck than her.

*

The future of Veelox was resting on exactly forty souls – forty people from the city of Rubic City which, at the time of the last count of phaders, vedders and jumpers was three million. She and the others would leave this city to it's fate, praying that the other cities across Veelox would somehow join them on the island of Ibara, where there had once been a military base. There they would rebuild their civilization with no knowledge of this place. As the infrastructure of the cities crumbled, the preparations were made. They'd sunk nearly every ship in the harbor so that the Flighters – people who came out of Lifelight but did not want to live in organized society any longer – could not follow them. Aja already knew that she would not be among them. Pendragon had come from Veelox's future – from Ibara with it's Traveler, a snot nosed kid named Siry Remudi who'd been in complete awe of her – and she had learned of her fate. A Flighter was going to kill her.   
*

Dying, it turned out, was a lot easier than Aja had thought. In fact, it was pretty damn easy – even if cause of death was getting beaned by a iron pipe. There'd been a flash of pain, the sensation of falling – and then nothing. Nothing until she felt something – it felt like a large hand – gently shake her.

“Nn...” She responded, not wanting to move. She wasn't in pain, but you'd think, being dead, people would at least... _I'm dead, okay, leave me alone!_

“Please.... wake up...” The voice sounded deep chested and odd – it sort of sounded like Seegen. Aja groaned in reply and pushed herself up to a sit. “Hello.” The voice said again and Aja looked to her left. The klee studied her for a moment. “You... you're not Loor, are you?”

In response, Aja threw back her head and laughed – full out, harder than she had in months, _laughed._ “Far from it!” She kept giggling as she held out her hand. “I'm Aja Killian, Traveler from Veelox – I know who you are, you're Kasha – from Eelong.”

The klee let the gar shake her paw, although it was a bit awkward. “Yes, I'm called Kasha.” She sat back on her haunches, looking around the area where they sat. The landscape wasn't desolate – there were patches of green and patches of brown – she supposed this might be what a place plagued by drought must look like. “Were you ever told of this place?”

Aja pulled off her yellow-tinted spectacles, cleaned the lenses and put them back on. “No. I was going to ask you – as I think you got here before me.”

“I've not been here... all that long...” Kasha titled her head upward, towards the sky where there was no sun, no moon – just countless stars. “Do you think the other Travelers are all right?”

“I hope so...” She shifted slightly, resting her arms on her knees. 

“How's the war going? Do you know?” Kasha's ears flicked back, a look of what Aja might call eagerness on the cat's face.

“I'll tell you what I do know.... though I've been so busy as of late....”

“Anything would be good. I've not had anyone to really talk to...”

Aja gave her fellow Traveler a weary smile. “Me neither....” So she took a deep breath and began at the beginning. Around them, patches of brown slowly turned to rock and the area became more desolate, but it went unnoticed. The stars came and went, but the first Travelers to reach Solara and stay there continued to converse, completely oblivious to the war that was still being raged without them.

It would not be long before the rest of their fellow warriors against Saint Dane joined them.


End file.
